QB 46 
.H22 
Copy 1 



THE HEAVENS 



/ 



THE HEAVENS 

ASTRONOMY FOR CHH^DREN 

BY 

TAMES COFFEE HARRIS, A. M. 
CAVE SPRING, GA. 

t:()PVRICHT, 1921 



a^^^ 
.U^'^ 



0)CU614114 
APR 16 192/ 



THE HEAVENS 



THE STARS 

Talks to the o'der Pupils of the Georgia School for the Deaf by 
Mr. J. 0. Harris. Jan. -JSrh 1921. (Stenograpluc report. ) 

Twinkle, twinkle, little Star, 
How I wonder what you are. 
Up above the world so high. 
Like a diamond in the sky. 

Children wonder what the star.s are. A long time ago 
grown people did not know, but now we do know what the 
stars are. We know what they are made of. We know 
how big they are. We know which way they are traveling. 
We know how fast they go. We knoAV which stars are 
young and which stars are old. 

We know tliat the .stars are made of the same things that 
the earth is. We know that there is iron in some of the 
stars. We know that there are gases in all the stars. We 
know that there are jihe same things in the stars as is in the 
air and in the water and other things on the eartli. We 
know^ that the stars are made of the same things that the 
Avater is made of and that the rocks are made of. Tlie 
earth is made of 92 different kinds of matter, different kinds 
of atoms. We have found nearly all of these 92 different 
kinds of matter in the stars. 

We have two instruments through which we look at the 
stars. One instrument helps us to tell what the stars are 
made of. With this we can tell what gases are burning in a 
stnr to make it shine. This instrument is the spectroscope. 
(Mr. Harris wrote on the board the word Spectroscope and 
he told many .things the instrument showed us.) The other 
instrument is the telescope, a picture of which I show you. 
It enables us to see stars that our eyes camiot see and it 
show\s us many things. The best telescopes divide distances 
away by 3000; they seem to bring things 8000 times nearer 
to us. ^ 

I have told you what the stars are made of. If you will 
look at the stars closely you will see many colors in them. 



4 



THE HEAVENS 



Some stars are red, some stars are blue, some are yelloAv, 
some are bluish-white and some are yellowish-red. Now we 
know tliat the wliite stars are the young stars. They have 
not been made very long as compared with the red stars 
Avhieli are old stars. After awhile the red stars will stop 
shining, wdien they are xery, very old and then you cannot 
see them from here. There are many dark dead stars that 
we cannot see; yet we know they are moving in the sky. 
We know this because sometimes one of them gets between 
us and a shining star and shuts off the light of that star. 







'V\]o Stars as Se^.n in a 'rel( 

/',.!>, ihir Srlriu; Monti, hj. SrpU'nihrv. lUir,. 



Kach White Dot is n Star. 



THE HEAVENS 



The 81111 is just one of the stars. It seems so big because 
it is so iR'ar us. The stars seem so little because they are so 
far away. Mau^^ of tlie stars ;ire bigger than the sun. The 
sun is ninety-tln-ee million miles away from here, but the 
nearest star is 25 trillion miles away from here. 

There are hundreds of millions of stars. On a clear night 
when you look up at the stars jnm can see only four thousand 
stars- Some stars are very bright because they are noi so far 
away as other stars. Some look very bright because they are 
very big. We now know the size of many of the stars. We now 
know how many miles some of the stars are from the earth. 
Remember the sun is just one of the stars, but it is so near 
us compared with other stars that it gives us the light of 
day. We cannot see the stars in the day time, but they 
shine in the day as well as in the night. When our earth 
turns over so that we cannot see the sun it is dark, and then 
we can see the stars. The light of the sun is then shut off. 



THE HEAVENS 



The Planets 

This star of ours, the sun, has a family of children and 
the children stay around this star like children stay around 
their father. These are called planets. They go aroui^d 
our star, the sun, and stay around it. They keep their dif- 
ferent distances away from the sun. These planets belong 
to the sun. The sun goes tlirough space at the rate of twelve 
miles a second. Some of the stars move through space as 
fast as 200 miles a second. Some stars move very fast and 
someverj^ slow. The white stars travel slow, the red stars 
travel fast. The sun is yellowish red and is not as old as 
some stars. Therefore the sun does not travel through space 
as fast as the very red stars. As the sun moves on he drags 
all his children, the planets, with him. All the planets go 
around the sun as he moves on. 

There are eight of these planets which we call the children 
of the sun. Some of these are large and some are small. 
They are all shaped like the sun and they go around on their 
axes like the sun. They spin around on their axes from 
west to east. This makes dny and night on each of the 
planets. The names of these children of the sun are in the 
order of their distance away from him, Mercury, Venus, 
Earth, Mars, .Jupiter, Saturn, Uraiuis and Neptune. (Mr. 
Harris then wrote the names on the hoard and had the pu- 
pils repeat the names of the planets.) Between the orbits 
of Mars and Jupiter are many globes too small to be seen 
with the naked eye. They are called Planeti»i(is. They 
also go around the sun. The sun is the father and these 
planets are the children and he carries the children along 
with him as he rushes through space. 



THE HEAVENS 




OOMPARATiVE SIZES OF THE PLANET; 
THE NUMBFvK OF THEIR MOONS 



AND 



8. 
4. 

Fro,,, If// 



MERCURY— No Moon 
MARS— 2 Moons 
VENLTS- No Moon 
EARTH— 1 Moon 

\.<tin,ln„iu. 



1;KANT:s— 4 Moons 
NFPTTNF- 1 Moon 
S AT LT K X— y M oons 
.irPITFK— <» Moons 



S THE HEAVENS 



Would you like to know how these planets were made and 
why they ail go around tlie sun? I will tell you what those 
believe who know the most about it. A long time ago a groat 
star passed very near our sun, which is so hot that it is all 
liquid and gas. Its light comes from burning gases. When 
the great star was very near the sun it drew the sun toward 
it so strongly that great quantities of the liquid and gaseous 
body of the sun shot out toward the star. Some of it 
went so fnr from the sun that it could not get back, but it 
had to stay where it was. It was balanced by the pull of the 
star which had drawn it out and the pull of the sun which al- 
ways draws iv ))aek. This makes it go around the sun. Most of 
this matter that left the sun to follow the passing star final- 
ly drew together as eight different globes, whicli are our 
eight planets. Some of tliese have moons which go 
around them. Mercury has no moon. Venus has no moon. 
The earth has one moon. Jupiter has nine moons. Saturn 
has nine moons and Saturn has also some rings around it. 
If you look in the telescope at Saturn you will see the rings 
and nine moons shining around him. It is a very beauti- 
ful sight. Uranus has four moons. Neptune, which is 
farthest away from tlie sun, has one moon. 

Some of tliese planets move around the earth very fast,^ 
and some very slow. (Mr. Harris showed the children with 
the planetarium how fast the planets went around the sun, 
naming each planet.) A yeixr is the time it takes for the 
earth to go around the sun. A year on any planet is just 
how long it takes that planet to go around the sun. A year 
in Mercury is 88 of our days. A year in Venus is 225 of our 
days. A year on the earth is oGo days. It takes Mars 1.910 
of our years to go around the sun. It takes Jupiter near- 
ly twelve of our years to go around the sun. It takes Saturn 
29i of our years to go around the sun . It takes Uranus 84 
of our years to go around the sun and it takes Neptune 165 
of our years to go around the sun. The farther away fronj 
the sun a planet is, the longer it takes it to go around the sun. 
The earth, j^ou remember, is 93 million miles from the sun. 

(Mr. Harris showed tlie children the planetarium again 



THE HEAVENS 



and showed them liow the planets travel.) Neptune is 
nearly three billion miles from the sun. If you were to 
start to Neptune and go a mile a minute it would take jow 
5000 years to go to Neptune. It would take you 700 years 
to go to Jupitei'. It Avould take 5000 j^ears to go to Neptune 
•ill an air ship. You could not go in an air ship from the 
earth to a planet 







Distance 


Degree of 


Time of 


Time of 


Density 


o 

-2: 


PlanAf 


Diameter 


from Sun 


Inclina- 


Rotation 


Revolution 


Comp'd 




in Miles 


inMillions 


tion of 


on Axis 


Around 


with 


o <^ 






of Miles 


Axis 


the Sun 


Water 




Mercury 


3.020 


36 




88 Days 


88 Days 







Venus 


7.700 


67.2 




225 Days 


225 Days 


4.8 





Earth 


7.920 


93 


23.5 


23 hrs.. 56 min. 


365 1 -4 Days 


5.58 


1 


Mars 


4.230 


14K5 


25 


24 hrs., 37 min. 


687 Days 


4.01 


2 


Jupiter 


87,000 


483.3 


Small 


9 hrs.. 55 min. 


1 1 7-8 Yrs 


L33 


9 


Saturn 


73.000 


886 


25 


10 hrs., 13 min. 


29M Years 


.72 


9 


Uranus 


3h900 


1,782 


Large 


Unknown 


84 Years 


L22 


4 


Neptune 


34,800 


2.790 


Large 


Unknown 


165 Years 


l.ll 


I 



because the air does not exist much higher than 100 miles 
above the earth. Beyond that there is no air, hut empty 
space till you reach a planet or a star. 

All these planets move in the same direction around the 
sun. They all turn on the axes just as the earth does, from 
west to east. The sun also turns around from west to east. 
The sun turns on its axis and the earth turns on its axis. 
It takes the sun 25 tlays to turn on its axis because it is so 
big. It is 864,000 miles in diameter. Our earth is neaily 
<S000 miles in diameter and it turns on its axis every 24 
luHirs. The sun is more than a million times as big as the 
earth. If it were liollow. it wo\dd hold more than a mil- 
lion earths. 

Remember the earth's diameter is nearly 8000 miles. The 
diameter of Mercury is just a little more than a third of the 
earth's diameter. Venus is nearly as big as the earth. The 
diameter of Mars is a little more than half that of the earth. 
The four planets nearest the sun are very much smaller than 



10 



THE HEAVENS 



the four planets farthest from the sun. The diameter of 
Jupiter is eleven times that of the earth. Satur^i nine, 
Uranus four times, Neptune a little more than four times. 

If you were to weigh all tlie planets you wolild find that 
the sun would weigh 744 times as much as all of them to- 
gether. We know how much these planets weigh. We 
know how much the sun weighs. The earth weighs six sex- 
tillion tons. The sun weighs 330,000 times that much. 




The Planets on the Surface of the Siiil, Sli6\ting the Relative 

Sizes of Sun and Planets. The black band represents a belt 

across the Sun, whose diameter is 865,000 miles. If the 

Sun were a liollow sphere it would hold mere than a 

million spheres the size of the Earth. 

From Lesfoiiff hi Physical Geography, Copyright '190'! , i91<j,fiy Charlea R. Dryer, 
A mcrican Book Company, Puhlisherft. 

Some of the planets, like the earth, do not shine. The 
light on them comes from the sun, except a little light at 
night which comes from the n'loon and stars. (Mr. Harris 
showed the pictures of the placets on a black space which 
sh(^ws the size of tlie sun and the siies 6f the planets.) 



THE HEAVENS 23 



The Moon 

It would take eighty-one mocms to weigh as muci as the 
ea'tlj. The diameter of the iDoon is 2160 miles, which is 
but little more than one-fourth the diameter of the earth. 
The mnon is going with the earth around the sun. The 
moon is also going around the eartli. 

The moon goes around the earth In 29i days. It also 
turns on its axis in 29^ days. It stays 240,000 miles from 
the earth. It keeps the same part of its surface alwa3'S to- 
ward the earth. This makes the face of the moon look al- 
ways the same. Tliough the moon goes jUI around the earth 
and turns all around on its axis in the same time, we always 
see the same lialf of tlie moon. You can understand why 
this is if you will face a person and then by stepping side- 
ways and keeping j^our face toward him and staying the 
same distance from him you walk in a circle around him. 
He cannot see your back. So because the moon turns on 
its axis in the same number of days as it takes for it to go 
around the earth, we always see the saine part of the moon. 
Nearly half the moon is forever hidden from our sight. 

The moon is only about one- fourth of a million miles awaj^ 
from us. The sun is ninety-three million miles away, near- 
ly four hundred times as far. With the best telescopes we 
see the moon as if it were only eighty miles away. It has 
no air or water on it. It has no living thing on it. We 
see many mountains and we see shadows of these mountains 
when the sun is shining on them. We see inside the top of 
many large volcanoes that do not now burn. The moon is 
cold and dark exeept on the part where the sun is shining. 
Moonlight is sunlight reflected by the moon. The only part 
of the moon that we see is the part facing us that is getting 
the sunshine. When the whole of the part of the moon 
facing us gets the sunshine, it is full moon. When only a 
small part of the part facing us gets the sunshine, it is new 
moon or old moon. 

Remember it is 29-2- days from one new^ moon to the next. 
The side of the moon facing us gets at new moon a little 
fuller of sunshine every day till full moon, and it is seen af- 
ter sunset at a place in the sky further toward the east than 
it was the night before. 

•'Yon moon that rising looks for us again, 
How oft hereafter will slie wax and wane ! 
How oft hereafter rising look for us 
In this same garden,— and for one in vain." 



THE HEAVENS 



11 



The Zodiac 



A^^ I told 3^011 every clear night, 3'(>u car. see with your naked 
eye all the planets except Uianus and Neptnne. You will 
find them all in tlie part of the sky that is nearly above the 
earth's equator. The narrow strip of the sky in which all 
the planets stay as they go around the sun is called the 
Zodiac. This zodiac is only sixteen degrees wide. It is 
only about one eleventh as wide as all the sky which you 
can see at one time. It is the path of the planets as thej^ 
travel from west to east in the sky nearly over the earth's 
equator. If you look at this part of the sky you can see 
five stars that do not twinkle. These are the five planets. 
All of them except Mars stay near the middle of the zodiac. 
Mars is sometimes near the edge. The planets change their 
places in the sky every day as they move around the sun . 
All the stars seem to stay in the same place for thousands of 
years, but we know they really are moving. Onlj' the 
planets seem to move their places in the sky. 



12 THE HEAVENS 



The Milky Way 



The sun is near the center of the space inliabited by stars. 
The Milky Way is {i broad irregular strip of dim light to be 
seen every clear night across the skies. Looking toward tlie 
Milky Way we see where most of the stars stay, many of 
them too far away to be seen even with a telescope. All the 
stars not in the Milky Way can be seen with a telescope. A 
box big enough to hold all the space where there are stars 
would be in the shape of a very flat watch . The circumference 
of this great box would be around the Milky Way. The 
diameter of this vast space that takes in the farthest stars is 
about two hundred quadrillion miles. The thickness of this 
star inhabited space in only about one tenth as much, about 
twenty quadrillion miles. Outside this watch shaped part of 
space where the stars stay there is nothing that we know of. 
It may be that tliere are other systems of stars whose light 
cannot reach us, because they are so far away that the light 
from them is shut off by the many little particles of nujtter 
scattered here and there in the space l)etw^een us and them. 
There are in the sky some patches of dim grayish light that 
may be just a little light that comes through from other 
syst'nus of stars like ouis. We do not know this. We can 
only guess. 



THK HHAVENS 



13 



The Comets 




Comets' Tails Lag Behind tlie Line Joining the Sun (S) and 

the Comets' Nuclei. Orbital Motion is Can-ying- tlie 

Nucleus of the Comet to the Right. 

Scicntifif Moittldy. Dercmhcr, 1916, 

(Mr. Harris showed tlie children a picture of a. coi^iet. ) 
Tlie comet looks like a star with a long tail or banner. This 
(M)met goes around tlie sun just as tlie planets do. There 
are 400 comets that we know of which go annnid the sun. 
Tlie men who study the stars know when to look for each of 
tliese comets. The tail of the comet never points to the 
sun ])ut points away from tlie sun, because the sunlight 
strikes against the thin material whicli makes up the tail of 
the Comet. Tlie wave of the sunlight drives the tail of the 
comet back behind the head and away from the sun. The 
head of the comet is made of many small bodies, that once 
rushed together as tliey were wending their way around the 
sun, and now they pull together and stay together while 
they all go around the sun at the same time. Some of the 



14 THE HEAVENS 



bodies that nmke the head of the comet are iiiueh lieavier 
and larger than other bodies in the head of the comet. 
When the bodies that make the head of the comet get wide 
apart it is no longer a comet. Thus c<miets are born and 
comets die. The comets may be called the wayward child- 
ren of the sun. The sun has mauy of these wayward child- 
ren. They go far away from their birth place and get in 
trouble. They get mixed up with the planets and some of 
them fall into the sun and then they become a part of the 
sun as a drop of water falling in the ocean becomes a part of 
the ocean. The matter that makes up the comets, like that 
which makes up the planets, was once in the sun and was 
pulled away from the sun by a passing star a long, long 
time ago^ It has been going around the sun ever since. 



THE HEAVENS 15 



The Meteors 



When you look np into the sky at night 3^)11 sometime^s 
see a streak of light suddenly appear. You will see what 
looks like a star falling in the sky. It looks like a star 
shooting across the sky. It is not a star. As you know, the 
stars are very, very far away, trillions of miles away and 
these things tliat you see which look like stars are in the air 
just above us, less than 100 miles away. These things that 
look like stars are not stars but they are meteors. These me- 
teors are rocks that were once far above the eartn. Some are 
very small and some are larger than this room . They make a 
flashing in the sky because they fall on the earth very fast; 
and when they strike the air they make a streak of light, 
the same way as when you hit a piece of iron with a rock, 
you see sparks of fire come out. When these rocks that 
were above the air in the sky come down to earth very fast 
they strike against the air and this knocks sparks of fire out 
of them. Meteors are not falling stars, they are just rocks, 
some big ones and some little ones. There are many of these 
rocks in the sky and they fall to the earth as meteors every 
day. A great many of these rocks that are up in the sky 
are rocks that were once traveling together as C(nnets. When 
too near the sun the rocks would pull apart, thty would pull 
further and further apart ever3^ time they passed near the 
sun, and after awhile there would be no comet. When 
these rocks that were once in comets fall, some of them go 
through theairentirelj^ to the earth and they make great holes 
in the ground. I have seen maiij^ meteors that have fal- 
len to the ground. Some of them I have seen Mre one-tenth 
as large as this room. You can see many of them in a New 
York citj" museum and in the Washington city museum. 
Tliej' are made of the same matter as rocks on the earth. 
When Peary w'as trjnng to find the North Pole he found a 
big meteor rock near the Arctic circle, a)\d he put it in his 



16 THE HEAVENS 



ship and brought it to New York city. It was a rock that 
had made a flashing light in the sky, perhaps many years 
before Peary found it. 

Some of these meteors make a very brilliant path through 
the sky. Some of them burst with a loud explosion. I will 
tell you about one of these exploding meteors. On the 2nd 
day of August, 1860, about ten o'clock at night a great ball 
of fire about the size of the full moon came suddenly in 
sight to people living in Northeastern Georgia and went 
northward, exploding over the southern boundary line of 
Kentucky. It was seen over an area 900 miles in diameter. 
The length of its path in the sky was 240 miles, which it 
went in eight seconds, about thirty miles a second. When 
it was first seen in Georgia it was about 82 miles above the 
earth's surface, when it exploded in Kentucky it was about 
twenty-eight miles high. Sometimes after these explosions 
many of the broken parts fall to the earth. 



THE HEAVENS 



The Nebulae 



(Afr. Harris sliowed the pliotogrnpli of stars) "^Vm see 
many white dots. That is tiie photograph of whiit you see 
when yon look through a telescope into the sky. Instead of 
seeing a few stars you will see many thousand stars. Each 
one of these hright dots is a star. You will also see white 
patches in the sky. These whitish patches w^ill perhaps he- 
come stars alter awhile. (Mr. Harris showed a photograph 
of a nehula. ) See one of these large gray patches. There are 
several hundred thousand of these gray patches that are seen 
through a telescope. One is called nebula and two or more 
of them are called nebulae. (Mr. Harris wrote the words, 
Nebula and Nebulae on the board) Stars are born from 
them . 




From Photooraph in Com. stock's Af^ti'ooomv.—D. .ipplefon d- Co. 

This is the w'ay a nebula appears in the telescope. You 
can hardly see it with the naked eye. In the telescope it 
looks like a vast whirlpool of whitish matter that is glowing 



18 THG HEAVENS 



with light. We can see a large mass in the middle and some 
thickened rounded places. These are contracting to be 
globes and they will draw into themselves all smaller bodies 
of matter near them. The large mass in the middle will be- 
come a large star. The central rounded masses will become 
other stars, but perhaps not so large. It was in this way 
that our sun was made. A vast nelula drew together to form 
a star. The light from the nebula in the picture (Andro- 
meda) tells us that it is made of the same kind of matter as 
we find on the earth. The spectroscope tells exactly what 
gas is burning to make the light that comes from a star, or a 
nebula or a comet. 



THE HEAVENS 1) 



The Stars Move 

As I told you all the stni'S are moving. The red stars 
moving fast and the white stars moving slow. These stars 
do not all mcn-e in the same direction. Many stars are 
moving in the same direction as if they belonged to the same 
stream. There are several different streams of stars moving 
in different directions. Sometimes the stars pass so close to 
one another as to pull awa^^ parts of cme another, and some- 
times they come together and cause a collision, like two en- 
gines meeting. When two stars meet both are destroyed, 
and the stuff they are composed of spreads out many mil- 
lions of miles. That becomes a nebula, and glows in skj^ as 
a broad white patch. The scattered matter that makes up 
the nebula will draw together in globes or balls and each one 
of the globes or balls will become a star. Some stars are 
born tins way. At first all stars are white stars. These 
stars keep shining millions and millions of j'ears and after 
awhile the white stars become the red stars and then after a 
long while ihe^^ become dai'k dead stars. All stars keep 
moving on through space until they strike another star. 
When stars hit each other, as I told you, they become a neb- 
ula, and tlie scattered material of every nebula draws to- 
gether to become a globe and thus becomes a star. Some- 
times one Nebula will make several stars. 

At night when you look up at the stars you will see some 
white and some red stars and you will find some whitish 
patches that I told yoii are not stars, but are called nebula. 
Remember there are many hundred million stars. There 
are more than Xhree hunrlred thousand nebulae. Some of the 
nel)ulae are being n^ade into stars. Some of the whitish 
patches in the sky are thought to be light from other systems 
of stars, other universes, so far away that ovu' telescopes 
ca,nn(tt see their separate stars.. 



20 THE HEAVENS 



How the Planets Appear 

You will see that almost all of the stars twinkle, that is 
they sparkle and seem to shake. They are far more beauti- 
ful tlian diamonds. Look touiglit to*vard the west, just after 
sunset and you will see a big star but it does not twinkle, 
that is, it does not sparkle. This star shines with a steady 
light TJiere is enough light from that star to make an ob- 
ject on the earth cast a shadow. Sometimes you can see 
that star in the day time, ii is so veiy bright. But it is not 
a star at all. It is Venus, which, you remember, is one of 
the planets. It will change its place and be the morning 
star in a few weeks. Then it will come to be the evening 
star again. The light from planets do not twinkle. If the 
light of a star twinkles, it is really a star as big and bright 
as our sun^ but so far away it looks like a point of light. 
If it does not twinkle it is a planet. All planets move about 
through the sky. They go around the sun. So you can 
tell a planet from a star in twc^ ways. The planets do not 
twinkle and they move their places in the sky. 

Venus is now the evening star and the morning star 
is Jupiter. Saturn is very near Jupiter just now. You 
cannot see the planets Uranus and Neptune with the naked 
eye, because they are so far away. Neptune is nearly 
three billion miles away. We Ciin see Mercury, Venus, 
Mars, Saturn and Jupiter every night. These five planets 
and the sun and the moon, seven in all, are the only 
things that we see in the heavens that seem to move. Al- 
though the stars move, they do not seem to move and 
we call them hxed stars. These five pLatiets and the 
moon and the sun are seen to move. A long time ago 
people, the Egyptians and the Babylonians, thouglit 
that these wandering planets and the sun and the moon were 
seven gods and tliat thej' helped us sometimes and hurt 
us sometimes. Because the .people thought they werf gods 
and could help us or hurt us the people would make burnt 



THE HEAVENS 21 



ufiferings and prayers to these heavenly bodies. One day 
they prayed to the sun, the next day to tlie moon and so on 
until all the seven gods were in the sky prayed to. We 
now call the day on which they prayed to the sun Sundays 
and the dny on which they prayed to the moon Monday, 
Satun^a}^ is the name of the day tliey prayed to Saturn. 
There were seven of the heavenly bodies, five planets and 
the sun and the moon, that they thought were gods and they 
would make sacrifices to them, so that once in every seven 
days everj^ god in the sky was worshipped. These people 
thought that seven gods were looking down on them, and if 
the people were good, the gods would know it and if they 
were bad the gods would know it. We now know the 
truth about the heavens, and the sun and the moons 
and we laugh at those old time people who lived four thou- 
sand years ago because they thought these planets were gods. 
We now believe there is one God, who makes all these things 
and we pn\y to one God, but we cannot see him. We can- 
not see God, but we believe that he lives in the stars and in 
the planets and in the sun and in the moon and in every- 
thing. We believe that He lives in us. 



99 



THE HEAVENS 



The Eclipses 




Tlie stars draw oi^e another. The sun draws tlie eartl) 
and tlie moon and the planets aiid they draw the sun. The 
sun and his planets draw the stars. We call this gravitation. 
This makes every star and planet keep in its place. It 
makes the moon go around the earth. It makes the earth and 
the other planets go around the sun. Sometimes the moon 
gets hetween us and the sun. This makes an eclipse of the 
sun. Sometimes the earth gets l)etween the moon and the 
sun. This makes an eclipse of the moon, l)ecause it makes 
the shadow of the earth fall on the moon. We know the 
very minute of the days when all the eclipses will occur. 
'•There's a dial in the garden, 
And tlie sun is keeping- the time, 
A faint slow-moving shadow 
And wo know that worlds are in rhyme; 
And if thesliadow should falter 
By as inuch as a child's eyelash, 
Tlie sea would devour the mouiitaiiis 
And the worlds toiiether would crash.'" 



THE HEAVENS 23 



The Moon 

It would take eight\"-oiie moons to weigh as mnci as the 
ea*tli. The diameter of the moon is 2160 miles, which is 
but little more than one-fourth the diameter of the earth. 
The mnou is going with tlie earth around the sun. The 
moon is also going amund the earth. 

The moon goes around the earth in 29i days. It also 
turns on its axis in 29^ days. It stays 240,000 miles from 
the earth. It keeps the same part of its surface always to- 
*ward the earth. This makes the face of the moon look al- 
ways the same. Though the moon goes all around the earth 
and turns all around on its axis in the same time, we always 
see the same half of the moon. You can understand why 
this is if you will face a person and then by stepping side- 
ways and keeping j^our face toward him and staying the 
same distance from him you walk in a circle around him. 
He cannot see your back. So because the moon turns on 
its axis in the same number of days as it takes for it to go 
around the earth, we always see the same part of the moon. 
Nearly half the moon is forever hidden from our sight. 

The moon is only about one- fourth of a million miles away 
from us. The sun is ninety-three million miles away, near- 
ly four hundred times as far. With the best telescopes we 
see the moon as if it were only eighty miles away. It has 
no air or water on it. It has no living thing on it. We 
see many mountains and we see sl^adows of these mountains 
when the sun is shining on them. We see inside the top of 
many large volcanoes that do not now burn. The moon is 
cold and dark exeept on the part where the sun is shining. 
Moonlight is sunlight reflected by the moon. The only part 
of the moon that we see is the part facing us that is getting 
the sunshine. When the whole of the part of the moon 
facing us gets the sunshine, it is full moon. When only a 
small part of the part facing us gets the sunshine, it is new 
moon or old moon. 

Remember it is 29i days from one new moon to the next. 
The side of the moon facing us gets at new moon a little 
fuller of sunshine every day till full moon, and it is seen af- 
ter sunset at a place in the sky further toward the east than 
it was the night before. 

•'Yon moon that rising looks for us again, 
How oft hereafter will she wax and wane! 
How oft liereafter rising look for us 
In tliis same garden,— and for one in vain." 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



003 630 363 3 



